April 17, 2006

All Right, Shinseki Can Keep His Epaulettes

Upon reading this story in the New York Times, I will revise my previous statement that Gen. Shinseki should have been drummed out of service for blabbermouthing to Congress his personal position on how many troops were needed for "peacekeeping" in Iraq.

First, the set-up. Everybody agrees on this much:

General Shinseki, who commanded the NATO peacekeeping force in Bosnia, testified before Congress in February 2003 that peacekeeping operations in Iraq could require several hundred thousand troops, in part because it was a country with "the kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems."

Why was Shinseki wrong to say this?

First of all, generals and other staff (civilian and military) express their opinions privately; they are privately evaluated, and then the President of the United States (POTUS) decides. The content of such privileged communications cannot be divulged: what happens with POTUS stays with POTUS. Without such privacy, policy advisors will be reluctant to give their candid assessments, because they might leak out with unpredictable results.

Second, once a decision is made, the generals do not have the right to tell Congress that the decision is wrong. (And telling Congress is functionally equivalent to calling a press conference and telling the world, because somebody in Congress is sure to do so.)

Such congressional testimony inevitably becomes a political meme that will cause no end of problems forPOTUS and his entire administration. The opposition party will seize upon it (right or wrong) as "evidence" that the Commander in Chief is incompetent, use it to undermine his leadership and stir up anti-war sentiment across the country... which in turn can severely undercut congressional support for the mission.

The Pentagon planners, the service secretaries, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and President George W. Bush had already determined that we needed a smaller peacekeeping force (for good reason: see below) than Gen. Shinseki wanted.

Shinseki's congressional testimony called all that into question, as 535 "armchair Commanders in Chief" got to hear Shinseki's views -- but not the reasons why they were ultimately rejected.

For, third, as it happens, Gen. Shinseki's position was flatly wrong. He was only looking at the immediate military goal. There was a reason why Bush and Rumsfeld decided to do it the way they did.

Bush's overall plan -- enunciated in the January, 2003 State of the Union speech and other speeches before the Iraq war began -- was to democratize the Middle East, starting with Iraq. He believed, and rightly so, in my opinion, that there was no other way to drain the fever swamps, the centuries of accumulated moral filth, poverty, hopelessness, despair, and desperation that bred terrorism the way literal filth breeds disease.

For decades, we followed a policy of "stability, not liberty." But Bush came to believe (again, rightly) that the lack of liberty had not led to stability but its opposite -- chaos and madness, which had its demonic Omega in the 9/11 attacks.

Bush chose, as president, to follow instead a path of liberty -- not stability. Hence, the goal of Iraqi self-reliance was equally or more important than crushing a post-Hussein "insurgency."

You cannot set a country on the path to self-reliance by colonizing it. Had we inundated Iraq with "several hundred thousand troops," not only would that have offered many more American targets without a corresponding increase in effectiveness (we would be sending less-trained personnel and couldn't properly rotate them out, forcing them to stay for much longer tours)... but also, it would infantalize the Iraqis, leading not to self-reliance but greater dependency. We would simply substitute one despotic, condescending ruler for another... ourselves.

I'm sure we would have been an improvement over the Baathists. But we would not have advanced one iota towards the urgent goal of democratizing the region.

So what Gen. Shinseki said was wrong on three counts:

He had no authority to reveal the privileged communications between the Commander in Chief and his military and civilian staff;

Because Shinseki's recommendation was at odds with the final decision, it became a political football and damaged the president's leadership and public and congresssional support for the mission;

And the advice Shinseki gave was simply wrong, because he only understood the military goal... not the equally important, long-term political goal.

What he did was insubordinate. But I now think it likely that he was merely stupidly insubordinate, rather than mendaciously so. This, in particular, is the passage that caught my eye and slightly softened my stance:

General Myers said he believed that news media coverage had overblown the confrontation and had failed to take note that General Shinseki had been "put in a corner" in questioning before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

"General Shinseki was forced to make that comment under pressure, pulled a number out, wasn't wedded to it," General Myers said. He also said General Shinseki did not push for more troops after giving his Congressional testimony.

All right, Myers was presumably there; he probably knows the sequence of events. But he is wrong in one particular: Gen. Shinseki was not "forced" to answer that question. He could have refused... just as he would have had some Congressman asked for operational details of the upcoming invasion.

There are some questions you do not answer... and a four-star general who is the Army Chief of Staff is expected to know what those questions are.

I suspect Myers likes Shinseki and is miffed that one of his colleagues got (mildly) chewed out for doing something really stupid. But he still got off easy. As I now believe it was not deliberate politicking but simple dumbth, I agree he should not have been fired (as he was not).

He should have been reprimanded.

Shinseki should have gotten a letter in his file. No one else need see it; he was retiring anyway. But he should have retired knowing that he did something really, really stupid that damaged support for the war by making it seem futile and mismanaged, when in fact all the decisions made were reasonable and had right reason behind them.

Instead, all he got was a mild oral rebuke:

Days later, Mr. Wolfowitz, then the second-ranking official at the Pentagon, called the estimate "wildly off the mark," a sentiment that Mr. Rumsfeld repeated in comments that were widely interpreted in Washington and within the Pentagon as a rebuke of General Shinseki.

Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld then had to go to Congress and do damage control. And to this day, the president still has to defend himself against disingenuous accusations of sending too small a force... mostly from people who wouldn't have invaded Iraq at all.

I believe I understand why everybody behaved the way they did: Shinseki had a brain fart; Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld were trying to undo the damage Shinseki's brain fart caused; Bush felt loyal to Shinseki and did not want to damage his career or push him into premature retirement; Myers is in a loyalty tug-o-war between his duty to his former commander and his friendship with Shinseki.

But the reality is that Gen.Shinseki got away with a "senior moment" that should have exacted payment more dear.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, April 17, 2006, at the time of 5:02 AM

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Comments

The following hissed in response by: Mr. Davis

Dafydd, I usually agree with you but I absolutely disagree here. The Constitution does not give the Commander in Chief the discretion to go to war at his own will. The officer corps does not swear alliegence to the President, but to the Constitution. In making the decision to go to war, the Congress deserves to have the benefit of the widest possible expert opinion.

H. R. McMaster wrote a book on the challenge to the JCS of presenting the truth to its civilian masters, and concluded that much of the failure in that war was attributable to the JCS pulling punches.

Your criticism of Shinseki is that he was wrong "because he only understood the military goal... not the equally important, long-term political goal." However, he was an expert testifying to Congress only about the miliary issues. The responsibility for the long term political issues lay with the Congressmen. He was, in fact, correct about the narrow military issue to which he spoke. It was important for Congress to know that in weighing the broader political decision to go to war.

Speaking out as Shinseki did was something any officer would do lightly. Shinseki's career was already over, so he had nothing left to lose. It would be a career limiting move for an officer not yet at the end of his career, filed reprimand or no.

Deciding to go to war is serious business. More serious than conducting any single aspect of a war. Congress deserves the best information possible from all sources before deciding to authorize the use of force. Once war is declared, the military should act in its capacity as combatants. Until then, they are an important resource for which the citizens pay dearly and to which they deserve access as necessary to fulfill the obligations of the Constitution. Looking to the future, Hillary Clinton is treadding relentlessly to the White House. If she gets there I don't want the military leadership to be her lap dog.

I just read the account of Truman firing MacCarthur in McCullough's biography of Truman.

The point is the presdient is the Cammander in Chief and there is such a thing as insubordination. And Bush did have approval of Congress to go to Iraq but that does not mean that Congress gets to run the show for him. They tried that when Lincoln was President, right down to attempting to control battle plans and it was disastrous.

Dafydd, I usually agree with you but I absolutely disagree here. The Constitution does not give the Commander in Chief the discretion to go to war at his own will. The officer corps does not swear alliegence to the President, but to the Constitution. In making the decision to go to war, the Congress deserves to have the benefit of the widest possible expert opinion.

No, I disagree. In addition to Congress's right to investigate, we also recognize the Executive's right to privileged information (the phrase often used is "Executive privilege").

See the unanimous USSC decision and opinion in United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683 (1974), which found the privilege existed and was vital, but held it did not apply to court evidence that is "demonstrably relevant in a criminal trial" (hence Nixon had to hand over the tapes).

We have long recognized that Congress cannot simply haul in the president's most intimate advisors, put them under oath, and require them (at threat of jail) to tell them every bit of advice they gave him. Congress is not "more equal" than the Executive.

Would you argue, Mr. Davis, that Congress could require Gen. Abizaid to come in and detail for Congress all of our military intelligence programs and personnel working in Iraq? I don't think you would: it would be an absolute disaster if that information leaked out -- and telling Congress is like telling the New York Times.

Congress has a lot of investigative power; but the Executive -- a co-equal branch -- has the right to privileged advice and information.

Even in the highly unlikely case that Hillary Clinton becomes president.

Would you argue, Mr. Davis, that Congress could require Gen. Abizaid to come in and detail for Congress all of our military intelligence programs and personnel working in Iraq?

I agree this is a fine line case. But you are setting up a straw man. I thought it was clear that my comment is limited to the act of declaring war. Declaring war is at least as important as illegally recorded tapes of potentially criminal activity.

The decision to go to war is not an executive decision. The President need not request it, Congress could declare it against his will. And even if the President did request it, I would not extend executive privilege to preclude military personnel from providing Congress with their expertise in open or closed sessions as approriate. Senator Rockefeller already gets enough information to be responsible for several deaths.

Do you really want senior military personnel to let the Congress declare war without relevant information at the order of the President under cover of Executive Privilege?

The above hissed in response by: Mr. Davis at April 17, 2006 5:22 PM

The following hissed in response by: justphishing

Dafydd,

I agree with you, and request that you read today's post "The Rumsfeld "Mist of Angst", on my new blog (hatched this last weekend). I think you'll find some new information that helps support your stand.

Please give me your comments; editorial comments, and any other comments that might help me for future articles.

Thanks,

justphishing

The above hissed in response by: justphishing at April 17, 2006 5:43 PM

Well, since you ask, I think your post was well reasoned and it advances the debate; but I'd like to see some quotations from your sources to back up some of the things you say about Rumsfeld's "Paper Chase" style of management.

(Incidentally, that style in law schools long predates the 1970 novel by John Jay Osborn, jr. It's called the "Socratic method" because it supposedly mimics the pedagogic style of Socrates. When my father attended law school in the late-1950s at Boalt Hall, UC Berkeley, all the professors there used that style.)

Also, just a personal design note, I'm not fond of reading entire lengthy posts in italics!

Thanks, I will use your suggestions, starting with changes in the post you read.

justphishing

The above hissed in response by: justphishing at April 17, 2006 6:41 PM

The following hissed in response by: Eg

I guess we must learn again - as it has been said in various ways - why, ‘it is important to keep politic’s out the military but doubly important to keep the military out of politics.’

However, I really can’t help but wonder if aren’t really seeing some form of orchestrated combination of ’Revolting Retired General’s’ seeking political positions with maybe the Dem’s fishing for candidates or maybe network auditions for positions as ‘military analyst‘s.’ In either event, these generals have almost certainly burned themselves. Betrayal at this level and especially at this point in time won’t soon be forgotten, especially amongst their active comrades.

Unless someone’s crazy enough to dream-up a tin-pot coup…which I seriously doubt. The Kosz Kidz almost certainly have a million conspiracy theories up-and-running on the subject by now, if anyone’s brave enough to peek.

I’m not.

The above hissed in response by: Eg at April 18, 2006 5:45 AM

The following hissed in response by: Old_Sac_Gunner

Just to set the record straight, here is the oath taken by commissioned officers of the U.S. Army:

"I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."

Notice the reference to the President.

The above hissed in response by: Old_Sac_Gunner at April 18, 2006 9:09 AM

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